Camilla Pecci Blunt & Earl McGrath

Camilla Pecci Blunt McGrath came from an aristocratic family based in Tuscany and inherited her passion for photography from her mother Contessa Anna Letizia "Mimi" Pecci Blunt.  At first, Camilla chronicled her life and travels with her family and friends, and the erudite world of Italian nobility. After her marriage to Earl, her camera captured their whirlwind life and many friendships with the leading artists, writers, politicians and film stars of the day.  From the beginning, Camilla meticulously catalogued her photography in annual albums from 1948 to 1999. In doing so, Camilla McGrath documented the last five decades of the 20th century, and many of the prominent people who shaped it. 

Camilla Pecci Blunt was born in Paris in 1925 to the Italian Contessa Anna Laetitia “Mimi” Pecci and American financier Cecil Blumenthal.  When Mimi, the niece of Pope XIII who had grown up in a palazzo near Perugia, and Cecil, a wealthy and cultured American businessman, were married, Pope Benedict XV bestowed Cecil with a royal title. The couple combined their names to become Count and Contessa Pecci-Blunt. Mimi and Cecil lived in Paris where they immersed themselves in artistic and intellectual circles of the 1920s, and opened their homes to writers, poets, artists and musicians, including Georges Braque, Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali.

Mimi and Cecil purchased the historic Villa Reale of Marlia, outside of Lucca in Tuscany as a getaway spot.  The estate consisted of a complex of 16th and 17th century villas and formal gardens put together by Napoleon’s sister Elisa when she served as Princess of Lucca and Piombino.  Camilla and her four siblings grew up spending summers at Marlia, with the remaining months divided between the families’ homes in Paris, Rome and New York.  Wherever they were, they were always surrounded by their parents’ friends and associates – the leading artists, musicians and intellectuals of their day. In Rome, Mimi Pecci-Blunt organized concerts at their home in Piazza Aracoeli 3, and in 1935, opened the Galleria della Cometa which showed important contemporary artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, Guglielmo Janni and Gino Severini. During World War II, the family retreated to California and New York. Afterward, Mimi resumed her cultural activities and became a founding member of the Associazione Amici dei Musei di Roma. For the remainder of their lives, Mimi and Cecil Pecci-Blunt continued to delight in serving as a touchstone for the cultural cognoscenti of the day.

Camilla Pecci-Blunt inherited her mother’s talent for photography, which became her, lifelong passion. Just like her parents, Camilla and husband Earl McGrath, loved to entertain their wide circle of friends, who ranged from poets to painters, and from writers to rock stars.  Camilla and Earl reigned from their large rent-controlled apartment on 57th and 7th Avenues, directly across the street from Carnegie Hall. The couple also had a home in West Hollywood. They had hired the famed architect Arata Izosaki who was in California to work on the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 1982 to transform a nondescript commercial building into an apartment and gallery space.  454 N. Robertson, which opened there in 1985, was one of the most successful contemporary galleries in Los Angeles until it closed in 2008.   The Earl McGrath Gallery in New York which operated on 57th Street, from 1995-2005 and again in a different locale also on 57th, from 2008-201, was equally as successful. Camilla continued to spend every summer at Marlia, reuniting with her siblings and their extended families, and entertaining house guests.

Earl’s career in the entertainment business started in the late 50s when he went to work for the opera composer Gian Carlo Menotti as the U.S. Manager of the Festival dei Due Mondi, now known as Spoleto Festival. It was through Menotti that Camilla and Earl met for the first time. They married in January, 1963. In the early to mid 1960s, Earl worked for television producer Fred Coe at 20th Century Fox, before leaving for Los Angeles to try to make it as a screenwriter.  His two scripts The Freeway and The Bird Watcher were sold but never produced.

In 1970, Earl went to work for his friend Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records in Artistic Development and Press Relations. He launched his own label under their guise. Clean Records released albums by Delbert & Glen and Country. In 1973, Ahmet asked Earl to return to New York to focus on developing new talent. There he worked with J. Geils Band, AC/DC, Peter Tosh, ABBA and Jim Carroll. In 1977, Earl became President of Rolling Stones Records. During those four years the Stones released three of their top selling albums of all time: Some Girls (1978), Emotional Rescue (1980) and Tattoo You (1981). Weary of the music business, Earl began to focus on helping his artist friends market their work. With Camilla as a silent partner, they went formally went into the gallery business in 1985.

Camilla and Earl led an amazing life that centered around their many dear friends.  Between Camilla’s noble relations and aristocratic friends, and Earl's contacts in the rock and roll business and the art world, their lives were filled with many of the leading cultural figures of the last part of the 20th century.   

Camilla and Earl loved to entertain. Camilla quietly and keenly documented their gatherings, graciously setting her subjects at ease, capturing them during some of their most relaxed moments. Among their friends, and hence Camilla's subjects, were Marella and Gianni  Agnelli, Brooke Astor, John Belushi, Jerry Brown, Oscar de la Renta, Joan Didion and John Dunne, Faye Dunaway, Ahmet Ertegun, Robert Graham and wife Anjelica Huston, Audrey Hepburn, David Hockney, Mick Jagger, Henry Kissinger, Timothy Leary, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice and Helen Marden, Gian Carlo Menotti, Lorne Michaels, Jack Nicholson, Rudolf Nureyev, Roman Polanski (pictured with his young wife Sharon Tate,) Emilio Pucci, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Jerome Robbins, Ed Ruscha, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol and Jann Wenner.  While Camilla set out to document her family and friends, she was actually capturing a vibrant period of recent history and the people who shaped it. 

Camilla McGrath's photographs are in103 bound albums, organized annually from 1949 to 1999.  There are approximately 600-650 photos per book, primarily in black and white, each meticulously arranged and captioned.  Along with the albums, which she made herself, are binders of the accompanying negatives, also arranged by year and a complete index. The photos taken at the end of Camilla's life, from 2000-2007, organized but not bound, and correspondence from the late 50s until 2015.

Earl McGrath died in 2016. In his will, he directed the photographs pass to a non-profit organization which will make the images fully accessible to the public. The physical albums are held in the Camilla and Earl McGrath Archive at the New York Public Library. The copyright and negatives are held by the Foundation that bears their name.

The Camilla and Earl McGrath Foundation promotes and protects the photography of Camilla. The reproduction fees from the use of her photos are directed to help artists, writers, photographers and filmmakers experience the intellectual and creative exchange the McGraths informally provided those who were fortunate enough to be their friends.